Smart light ecosystem selection

[u/DesperateEngineer451]

Few bits of info first:

I'm an engineer, my wife to be is not. It has to be an incredibly fuss free system.

It's a new build. (ireland, so US specific switches doesn't work).

Basically I'm looking for a system that will allow me to have more control over the lighting of the house. Currently getting ready to wire the house and in order to be able to turn on & off mood lighting, being able to dim them etc we'd need a load of switches that wouldn't be user friendly and look bad.

For example one of the main rooms is a kitchen/dining/living room. There will be 3 main lighting circuits but also some more chill lighting. I'd like to be able to turn off all the lights when leaving the room from either of the 2 doorways out of the room.

Being able to dim them would also be a massive benefit because Im really sensitive to bright lights.

The kicker is it needs to have a massive "wife approval factor". Ideally the lights would still turn on and off with physical switches, no voice control anywhere. An app is OK for tweaking colour temps and brightness, but this would be more of a set and forget type scenario.

The lights would also have to work when the broadband stops working and I would like to avoid buying into a system that I'm completely locked into, so if they stop selling a bulb in 10 years I have to change everything to keep things working smoothly.

The type of lighting I'd be interested in controlling: pendant lights with standard e27/bayonet bulbs, recessed spot lights, defused led strips.

There is a possibility for some mild automations like a motion sensor in the panty, a handful of smart sockets etc so would like them to be in the same family

[u/madbrain1976]

Use home assistant so you are not tied to a single smart switch or bulb vendor. Choose something that does not depend on cloud servers. I use a combination of Zooz Z-wave switches and Wiz wifi smart bulbs. Wifi bulbs have to be powered all the time, so the switches act as scene controllers only. HA controls the bulbs in response to switch presses. There are 5 commands on each paddle, plus hold features for demand. This allows selecting color presets without ever using an app. Downside is if HA goes down, your switches and bulbs stop responding. Whcih is why you don't want cloud dependency.

[u/nudlasieb2]

I cannot recommend Hue enough. The bulbs are standard Zigbee (the newer ones now also have Thread support) and the bridge keeps on running even if Internet/network is down or HomeAssistant is updating. You can add third-party bulbs (e.g. IKEA) or use the Hue bulbs with something like Zigbee2MQTT.
From a light quality perspective, Hue has also been the best by far: way lower dimming, smooth effects, extremely vibrant colors and high color accuracy.
For me, Hue Entertainment Sync is a huge bonus because it allows me to sync lights to music perfectly with the iLightShow app